James Beardley Hendryx - Beyond the Outposts

“Must have,” admitted Downey, gravely. “Can’t recollect missin’ any grub, though. By the way, did you run across any Injuns back from the lake?”

“Yes, a few, but they were in good shape—all but one family up on a little lake just north of Lake MacKay. They had three kids, all little bits of devils, and the man had managed to chop his foot, and couldn’t tend to his traps. His foot was in pretty bad shape—all full of proud flesh and pus and as sore as the devil. Wouldn’t let me touch it at first, and the woman was worse than he was. But I persuaded ’em to after a while. They’d got caught in a sort of temporary camp, and the old girl had her hands full tryin’ to snare enough rabbits to keep ’em goin’. I stuck around a couple of weeks, and moved ’em over into some good rabbit country, and fixed up the foot, and shot ’em a caribou or two, and when I left they were in pretty good shape.”

“Too bad you don’t keep a diary, Gus,” said Downey, a smile twitching the corners of his mouth. “There’d be some things in it I’d kind of like to read. For instance, about you persuadin’ those Injuns to let you work on his foot—how’d you go at that persuadin’—what kind of argument did you put up to ’em?”

Gus Janier doubled his two fists, and held them up before the officer: “These,” he grinned, “an’ about sixty feet of babiche line. He wasn’t so hard to handle, but I had to knock the old woman down three times before she’d stay down long enough for me to get her tied. An’ I had to tie the oldest one of the kids, too. The little devil couldn’t have been over five or six, but he sunk his teeth into my thumb to the bone. Oh, she was a lively camp for a while, you ought to have seen the fun! We quit good friends, though. Before I left they’d have given me anything they had. When I pulled out the foot was about healed up, and the old boy was hobbling around on a kind of crutch I made for him. It was comical as hell to see him tryin’ to rig a snowshoe onto that crutch.”

“You’ve got quite a lot of those friends scattered around over a few million square miles of bush, ain’t you, boy? I run onto ’em every now an’ then.”

“Oh, I guess there’s some. An’ a hell of a lot of ’em that ain’t my friends. That reminds me, I ran across that damned Amos Nixon up on the head of Fish River.”

“When was that? An’ what was he doin’ up there?”

“This spring, before the ice went out. I don’t know what his game was—can’t figure what it could be, way up in there. But, it’s somethin’. He ain’t up there for any good.”

“He ain’t anywheres for any good,” agreed Downey. “I’d like to get holt of Nixon. Want to question him about some caches the Canadian Arctic Expedition reported robbed. They had him hired for a while, till they fired him for stealin’. I sent word to Fort MacPherson, and to Baker Lake to be on the look-out for him. We’ll pick him up before long. He’ll be showin’ up somewheres for supplies.”

“He’s a bad egg, all right. Got it in for me. You fellows have got a leak somewhere.”

“A leak?” The officer regarded the man gravely, “what do you mean?”

“I mean that some inside stuff is gettin’ outside—right where it’ll do the most harm.”

Downey puffed at his pipe for several minutes, then slowly shook his head: “I can’t figure it, Gus. There ain’t a man in the division but what I’d bet my life on.”

“Guess you’d be safe enough at that,” smiled Janier. “The leak ain’t in this division. It’s yonder.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the eastward.

“How do you know?”

“Last year Puk-puk and I ran onto a hooch cache over on Kazan River just south of Baker Lake.” At the sound of his name the great Chesapeake dog that was Janier’s inseparable companion raised his head and fixed his yellow eyes upon the face of his master. “Didn’t we, Puk-puk?” The dog’s tail thumped the ground lazily, and Janier continued. “I reported the find to the Inspector at detachment headquarters, and he sent a certain Constable down to investigate. He couldn’t find anything. But, when I ran onto Amos Nixon up on Fish River this spring, he managed to show me that he knew who had tipped his cache off to the Inspector.”

“M Division has always had good men,” said Downey, regretfully. “If anybody but you had told me that, I wouldn’t have believed him.”

“Yes, and they’ve got good men there, now,” said Janier. “Every man of ’em, except this one—and he’s going to take his discharge this winter. His time will be up then. He’s kultus komooks. Shouldn’t be surprised if he threw in with Nixon.”

Downey nodded, thoughtfully. “Guess I’ve got him located all right. Guess he won’t find no obstructions throw’d in his road when he asks fer his discharge. They squeeze into the Service once in a while, fellows like him—but they don’t last long. By the way Gus, why don’t you join on? Ain’t you about tired of roamin’ around the country doin’ nothin’ but huntin’ an’ fishin’?”

Janier laughed: “Tired of it! We’ll never get tired of it—Puk-puk and I. And, besides, we ain’t just huntin’ an’ fishin’.”

“What in the devil are you doin’, then? You don’t need to tell me that what little tradin’ you do, here an’ there, is enough to satisfy a young fellow with the energy you’ve got?”

“No, it ain’t the tradin’, either. It’s just—the livin’! If I was in the Service, I’d have to go where someone sent me. Maybe the Inspector would send me up the Mackenzie, at just the time my hunch told me to hit over around the Bay. I couldn’t do it, Downey. The way it is, I’m free to go wherever I please, whenever I please, and do whatever I please when I get there.”

The old Corporal smiled: “But, all that don’t get you anywheres—”

“It’s got me everywhere you’ve ever been, and I’ll bet a whole lot of places that you don’t know anything about.”

“Oh, sure—that ain’t what I meant. But, it’s time you was doin’ somethin’. You’re gettin’ along now to where a man ought to be accomplishin’ somethin’—layin’ somethin’ by. You don’t figure on goin’ on like this for ever, do you?”

“Wish I could,” laughed the other, “but unfortunately, I’ve got to die sometime. And, as for laying somethin’ by, it don’t take much to keep me goin’. What Dad left will last me a long time, yet.”

“Lots of folks talks, an’ lots of ’em kind of wonders what you’re really up to.”

“Let ’em talk, an’ let ’em wonder. Fact is, I don’t know myself. All I know is that sometime, someplace, I’m going to run onto something big.”

“Somethin’ big?” asked Downey, with interest. “What do you mean?”

“Haven’t the least idea in the world. Maybe it’ll be gold, or copper, or iron. Maybe a chunk of timber. Maybe a development proposition. Or a water-power project. But, I’ve got a kind of a hunch, someway, it’ll be gold.”

“Humph! The pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow,” growled the officer.

“Maybe,” answered the younger man, solemnly. “If I find it I’ll give you the gold. The pot’s half-full of gold, and half-full of happiness, you know.”

“How old you gettin’ to be, Gus?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Where you headin’, now?”

“Well,” answered the younger man, speculatively. “Until about an hour ago I was headin’ up the Mackenzie. Thought I’d kind of like to switch off west into the mountains somewhere. I was goin’ to camp here for a day or two. But all of a sudden I got a hunch to hit up the Bear. Probably wind up over around the Bay, somewhere, in the fall.”